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Study shows taking drugs still acceptable as we get older

05/03/2011 00:00:00

A long term study has found that as we progress into our thirties, illegal drug use is, with some caveats, still acceptable to many of us.

The research published in a book by criminologists at the Universities of Manchester and Lancaster is a follow up to a study that began in 1991, which tracked a cohort of almost 800 young people starting at the age of 14 up to the age of 18.

The story of the drug and alcohol use of these teenagers was published in 1998 in the book Illegal Leisure: the Normalisation of Adolescent Recreational Drug Use.

Thirteen years later, they are publishing Illegal Leisure Revisited, which updates the progress into adulthood of many in the original cohort when they were 22 and again at 28 years of age.

Many of these young adults, they found, continued to take drugs despite being conventional adults in full-time employment and long term relationships. A wide range of drugs appeared to be available to the cohort, whose levels of use were found to be close to historically high levels, in spite of reductions in drug taking over the past ten years.

Senior Lecturer Judith Aldridge from The University of Manchester's School of Law was one of the researchers on the study.

She said: "Contrary to received wisdom, it seems that not all recreational drug users 'mature out' of their adolescent drug taking and experimentation.

"But far from being out-of-control, the majority of drug-taking adults appear to be pretty similar to those who seek evening and weekend time-out, relaxation and fun through alcohol consumption.

"These adults do not reject the mainstream - their lives, outside their drug use, sit comfortably amongst these values.

"However we see them, they appear to accept drug taking as a fairly ordinary, normal activity that is 'okay'.

"The fact that most people in our cohort are able to accommodate their drug taking into home, work and family life demonstrates something of their 'commitment' to drug use."

Dr Lisa Williams from The University of Manchester, said: "This is not to deny that, as you would expect, we are seeing a 'settling down' with lower levels of drug use as the cohort progresses towards their 30s.